The present invention relates to software development technology, and more particularly, to obtaining context information for a software development task.
Lifecycle of software development may include phases such as requirement analysis, design, coding, testing, releasing, maintenance and the like. In the requirement analysis phase, various requirements and functions of a software development task may be obtained and confirmed. In the design phase, design concepts and technical points of the software development task may be determined. In the coding phase, a design result in the design phase is converted into computer executable program code. In the testing phase, the software is tested so that any problems can be found and corrected. Therefore, context information associated with the software development task is generated in each phase.
Furthermore, in the entire process of software development, relevant software developers also conduct various discussions. A lot of useful context information associated with the software development task may be generated in such discussions.
Such information associated with the software development task may exist in a plurality of tools for software development, as the context information. These tools, for example, include a requirement tool, a design tool, a testing tool, a task tracking tool, and the like. Each tool may include one or more tool components. Each tool component carries the specific context information associated with a certain software development task. The tool components of the requirement tool contain the context information describing the requirements. The tool components of the design tool contain the context information describing the design of how to realize the requirement. The tool components of the testing tool contain the context information describing the test cases verifying whether the requirements are met. The tool components of the task tracking tool contain the context information generated from the discussions of the software developers, which may taken as comments on other tool component.